This infographic was submitted to us by Sell My Old Mobile Phone.co.uk

There’s a lot of surprising and saddening information in this infographic. Some of it is nicely visualized, all of it is relevant, and the design and layout are really nice. I also like the color palette–it’s dark, but not prohibitively so, and it avoids the tendency for dark backgrounds to be contrasted by bright or neon colors. It’s also easy to navigate this infographic. Everything is well balanced, so it doesn’t look too cluttered or too empty anywhere. The design elements are all pretty creative. I really like the number 515 composed of phones, and the cow is an entertaining note to end on.

Data viz is only employed a few times here, right at the top of the infographic. Though there are so many numerical facts and statistics contained here, only the world population, population with mobile phones, and weight of dumped mobile phones are successfully visualized. All the other facts are simply illustrated: the cow by the greenhouse gasses fact is cute and related, but it’s not doing anything to show the 35 million pounds of greenhouse gasses. Same thing with the number 515. I suppose if it was actually composed of 515 phone images, that would be data viz, but as of now it’s simply a clever design element.

Just adding some more charts, graphs, and other forms of visualization will really help boost this infographic to its greatest potential. As is, I’ll give it a B!